Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Picnic at Hanging Rock ( 1975 ) PG | During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls' school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind. Director: a list of 38 titles created 18 Jan 2012 a list of 27 titles created 11 Sep 2013 a list of 42 titles created 03 Jan 2015 a list of 25 titles created 07 Nov 2015 a list of 46 titles created 20 Nov 2015 Title: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) 7.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 3 wins & 11 nominations. See more awards » Videos Edit Storyline Three students and a school teacher disappear on an excursion to Hanging Rock, in Victoria, on Valentine's Day, 1900. Widely (and incorrectly) regarded as being based on a true story, the movie follows those that disappeared, and those that stayed behind, but it delights in the asking of questions, not the answering of them. Written by David Carroll <davidc@atom.ansto.gov.au> A recollection of evil See more » Genres: 2 February 1979 (USA) See more » Also Known As: El enigma en las Rocas Colgantes See more » Filming Locations: $27,492 (USA) (26 June 1998) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia The opening lines spoken by Miranda, "What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream" are a paraphrase of lines from the poem A Dream within a Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe.

The lines appear as the last two lines of each of the two verses of the poem, with a slight rearrangement in the wording. See more » Goofs Miranda cuts the Valentine's Day cake with a clean kitchen knife. However, the next shot shows the cake cut down the middle, and the same knife lying beside it clean and bare, as if it had never been used. See more » Quotes [first lines] Miranda : What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream. See more » Connections (Canada) – See all my reviews Even though this has been described as a film about sexual repression (and Peter Weir may have thought he was making such a film), I don't think it is--rather, it is a celebration of the dreamy, self contained sexuality (or rather pre-sexuality) of young adolescent girls just before they seriously turn their attention to men. Sure, they may be living in a society straitjacketed by Victorian mores, but the girls really don't seem to be the unhappier for this, non withstanding the earthy maid's comments that she feels sorry for them.

Miranda and her friends seem completely content and at ease in their languid, hothousey world of poetry, pink and white bedrooms, and mutual crushes (I was reminded of the similarly dreamy, self contained little universe of the sisters in "The Virgin Suicides--another film that is supposedly about repression). During the noon day nap at Hanging Rock, the girls, heads resting in one another's laps, are in a state very much resembling post coital bliss--far from seeming repressed, they are among the most content women I've ever seen on screen. It is quite arguable that Victorian morality had something to do with their sexuality turning inward like this, but all this does is lend credence to the truism that repression intensifies sexuality--which may explain the lingering fascination the Victorian era has for the modern age, and why one of its most striking symbols of its oppressiveness--the corset--is also very erotically charged.

The girls' disappearance into the eerie black land form (that seems to have faces at times, bringing to mind fairy tales about trolls who steal golden haired children) suggests that at in their present state they are so contented that anything else life might hold for them could only be a letdown, that only whatever dark force (death? nothingness?) is haunting Hanging Rock could possibly be a worthy enough lover for these girls who are already so supremely self fulfilled. There are, unfortunately, aspects of this film that don't work, or rather jar with the elements discussed above, the most prominent of these being the Dickensian subplot of the persecuted orphaned pupil Sarah. The actress herself is affecting in her part and her boyish beauty contrasts well with Miranda's ethereal femininity (she looks like a young Renaissance prince at times), but her story really belongs in another movie because at heart "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is more Gothic than socially conscious. Maybe Weir really was aiming to make a movie about the evils of sexual repression, class inequality or even colonization, but such possible themes are blown away by the languid, ethereal images of the young adolescent girls at the beginning of the film, floating contentedly through their hours like clusters of Monet lilies.

99 of 119 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Picnic at Hanging Rock {Trailer} - YouTube Picnic at Hanging Rock {Trailer} Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Jun 18, 2011 Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian mystery film directed by Peter Weir, adapted from the novel of the same name. It premiered at the Hindley Cinema Complex in Adelaide, South Australia on 8 August 1975. It became one of the first Australian films to reach an international audience, receiving international acclaim and commercial popularity, and thus has an important place in both cinematic and Australian history. The film stars Helen Morse, Rachel Roberts and Vivean Gray. St. Valentine's Day, 1900.

On a beautiful summer's day a party of virginal Australian schoolgirls from an exclusive finishing school giddily prepare for an excursion to Hanging Rock, a magnificent natural monument drenched in a mysterious atmosphere. The girls gain permission to explore the upper slopes of the rock. Edith takes a nap and wakes to discover that the other three girls have removed their shoes and stockings and have resumed their trek as if in a dream, disappearing into a passageway in the rock itself. What eerie events took place that day, and will those involved ever rid themselves of the demons that the ill fated picnic unearthed? Based on the classic novel by Joan Lindsay, 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is both sublimely spooky and majestically beautiful, boasting visually hypnotic photography by Oscar winner Russell Boyd, a haunting score by Bruce Smeaton and the timeless ethereal beauty of Anne Louise Lambert as Miranda, this classic helped revive the Australian film industry and established Director Peter Weir as a major international talent.

Category ‎Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) directed by Peter Weir • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd 16 Read any review for Peter Weir’s mesmerising masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and you will see the words haunting, dream-like and enigmatic appear time and again. They are vague and uncertain descriptions but perfectly apt for a film that is elusive, ambiguous and rich in symbolism, complexity and interpretation. I have watched the film numerous times over the years (this, my first viewing in high-definition) and every time I am surprised by the new things I find, the new interpretations I dream up and the mixed emotions the film manages to evoke. On Valentine’s Day in 1900, a school trip to Victoria’s Hanging Rock turns to disaster when three students and their teacher disappear without trace. Whilst sounding like the… 6 There's something so unique with the Peter Weir directed mystery film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, that just hearing the title makes three adjectives spring to mind. Haunting, eerie and encapsulating.

Peter Weir is the Aussie director who went on to direct Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show and he has based the story on the notoriously famed Joan Lindsay novel by the same name, which together with this film spawned an ongoing urban legend and cemented Hanging Rock's position as an Australian landmark. The story takes place in the year 1900 and is quite simply about three girls from the private boarding school, Appleyard College who wanders of during a field trip to the mountain, Hanging Rock and mysteriously… 9 Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock is a mystical and beautiful film that I failed to connect to completely. Set in Australia in 1900 and centred around a real life mysterious disappearance of three girls and one teacher, it explores the nature of said disappearance and the effect it had on the school and the community. The first act had me glued to the screen. The attention given to creating a convincing depiction of the time period is something I always respect and admire. When the group of young women arrive at the rock for the picnic, Weir manages to create a sense of unease and mystery that transfixes and intrigues.

He almost makes the rock a character, a mystical force… Part of my 5 Directors x 5 Unseen Films (13) challenge. Based upon the 1967 historical novel by Joan Lindsay, this mystery drama from Australian director Peter Weir tells the fictional story of several schoolgirls and a teacher from Appleyard College, who disappeared while picnicking near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria, Australia on Valentine's Day in 1900. At the time of the outing, one of the students, Sara Waybourne (Margaret Nelson), was left behind at the College with the Headmistress, the widow Mrs. Arthur Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), and a jittery teacher named Miss Lumley (Kirsty Child) as a form of punishment. The rest of the faculty and student body made their way by horse-drawn wagon to the picnic… 3 "This we do for pleasure, so that we may shortly be at the mercy of venomous snakes and poisonous ants." The above quote from Picnic At Hanging Rock is the type of device that you see used a lot in mystery and thriller films especially, and it's a device I don't much care for.

It's usually such an unsubtle and clumsy way of setting up some drama to come, usually the antithesis of what is being stated by way of wanting to prove that character and his or her thoughts wrong, quite often as a method as marking them out as an antagonist. In a film like this, such a technique should be maddening as this is quite clearly not… Part of my 5 Directors x 5 Unseen Films (13) challenge. Based upon the 1967 historical novel by Joan Lindsay, this mystery drama from Australian director Peter Weir tells the fictional story of several schoolgirls and a teacher from Appleyard College, who disappeared while picnicking near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria, Australia on Valentine's Day in 1900. At the time of the outing, one of the students, Sara Waybourne (Margaret Nelson), was left behind at the College with the Headmistress, the widow Mrs. Arthur Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), and a jittery teacher named Miss Lumley (Kirsty Child) as a form of punishment.

The rest of the faculty and student body made their way by horse-drawn wagon to the picnic… Picnic at Hanging Rock Movie Review (1975) | Roger Ebert Tweet On a drowsy St. Valentine's Day in 1900, a party of girls from a strict boarding school in Australia goes on a day's outing to Hanging Rock, a geological outcropping not far from their school. Three of the girls and one of their teachers disappear into thin air. One of them is found a week or so later, but can remember almost nothing. The others are never found. Advertisement On this foundation, Peter Weir 's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975) constructs a film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria. It also employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and stories about the chasm between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home. The movie, which has been long out of release and unavailable even on video, has been restored in a new "director's cut'' that, unlike most revisions, takes out footage instead of adding it. Weir has pared seven minutes from an already lean and evasive film.

The result is a movie that creates a specific place in your mind; free of plot, lacking any final explanation, it exists as an experience. In a sense, the viewer is like the girls who went along on the picnic and returned safely: For us, as for them, the characters who disappeared remain always frozen in time, walking out of view, never to be seen again. The movie is based on a 1967 novel by Joan Leslie , then 71, who presented it as fiction but hinted that it might be based on fact. A cottage industry grew up in Australia about the novel and the movie; old newspapers and other records were searched without success for reports of disappearing schoolgirls. Much was made of the fact that the movie is set on a Saturday, and Valentine's Day did not fall on a Saturday in 1900; did the girls disappear into another time line? Were they raped by two teenage boys who were also on Hanging Rock that day? Did they simply fall into a crevice? What about the girl who was found alive a week later? She had lost her shoes, and yet her feet were not injured by the sharp rock paths. Did she levitate?

There is even a book, The Murders at Hanging Rock, that explains that the disappearances were fiction, but nevertheless offers several theories, including UFO abduction, for what happened. Advertisement Of course the entire point is that there is no explanation. The girls walked into the wilderness, and were seen no more. Aborigines might speculate that the rock was alive in some way -- that it swallowed these outsiders and kept its silence. As Russell Boyd's camera examines the rock in lush and intimate detail -- its snakes and lizards, its birds and flowers -- certain shots seem to suggest faces in the rock, as if the visitors are being watched. The movie has been compared to Michelangelo Antonioni's " L'Avventura " (1960), a film in which a man's wife wanders away on an island in the Mediterranean, and is never seen again. Antonioni's " Blow-Up " (1967) involves a body which may or may not be there, and a mystery that is never solved. For me, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" evokes E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, made into a film by David Lean in 1984.

In that story, a party of British visitors tours the Marabar Caves, which have the peculiar property of turning all speech into a meaningless echo. One of the women has something happen to her inside the cave -- the novel never explains what it is--and her sexual hysteria fuels the rest of the story. The underlying suggestion is that Victorian attitudes toward sex, coupled with the unsettling mysteries of an ancient land, lead to events the modern mind cannot process. That is exactly the message of "Picnic at Hanging Rock." The film opens as if it will make perfect sense. At Appleyard College in Woodend, Victoria, firm discipline and ladylike behavior are offered as a substitute for learning. The "college'' is more of a finishing school for adolescents, who live in a hothouse atmosphere where schoolgirl crushes are inevitable. Mrs. Appleyard ( Rachel Roberts ) herself seems to contain unexamined needs, and punishes one girl, a passionate rebel, by making her stay home from the outing. Advertisement The other girls, 19 of them, with two teachers, leave in a carriage for Hanging Rock.

They are all dressed in Victorian clothing that emphasizes modesty and inconvenience (an early scene shows them lined up, lacing each other's corsets). On the slopes of the rock their parasols and happy laughter are a contrast to the ancient, brooding land. Closeup photography shows the rock crawling with countless forms of animal, reptile and insect life, which hurries on its murderous business with no thought to the visitors. Music, some of it classical, played by panpipes, is an unsettling contrast. "We worked very hard,'' Weir told an interviewer for Sight & Sound, "at creating an hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions.'' Although I don't recall my 1975 viewing of the film in enough detail to be sure, my guess is that Weir's seven minutes of trims are intended to further discourage a "solution.'' The other party on the rock that day -- the two young men, an older couple -- are there not as possible suspects, I believe, but simply to show that a picnic on the rock could be perfectly safe.

The film wants us to sense that the heightened and repressed sexuality of the young students was in some way connected to their disappearance, as if their emotional states interlocked somehow with the living presence of the land. Advertisement There are other fragmentary suggestions that help us toward this idea. Of the girls who originally set out on the walk, one named Edith returns quickly, screaming the warning that the others are gone. Later she remembers that she saw the missing teacher in her underwear. Scraps of lacy underclothing are found later during a search. Back at the school, unspoken sexual feelings lie beneath many of Mrs. Appleyard's disciplinary actions, especially in connection with the rebellious Sarah -- the girl who was not allowed to go on the trip. "The film is just too damn impenetrable for its own good,'' writes the Web-based critic Kevin Maynard. I'm sure he speaks for a lot of viewers, but of course if you could penetrate it, there would be no film -- simply a police case, or an account of an accident.

My idea of Australia has been fashioned almost entirely from its films, and I picture it as a necklace of coastal cities, from which depend smaller inland towns, surrounding the vast and ancient Outback -- where modern logic does not apply, and inexplicable things can happen. Nicolas Roeg's " Walkabout " touches on some of the same feelings as "Picnic at Hanging Rock." In it, a white girl and her brother are left abandoned in the wilderness when their father kills himself. They would quickly die, but are saved by an aborigine boy who, in an ironic reversal, kills himself after they all wander back to civilization. The suggestion in both "Walkabout" and "Picnic'' is that aboriginal life cannot be sustained in cities, nor European-based life in nature, and it is intriguing that girls on the brink of maturity are the focal point in both films.

Advertisement Peter Weir, born in 1944, went on to great success after "Picnic at Hanging Rock.'' His titles include "Witness," "Gallipoli," "The Last Wave," "The Year of Living Dangerously," "The Mosquito Coast," "Dead Poets Society" and "Green Card" -- and his widely praised 1998 film "The Truman Show." It's interesting that most of these titles deal in one way or another with outsiders who find themselves in places where they are not a good fit. Somewhere at the very bottom of his imagination must lurk the conviction that you'll be all right if you stay at home, but if you wander into other lands you may find that you have disappeared. Popular Blog Posts Picnic at Hanging Rock (Film) - TV Tropes Picnic at Hanging Rock You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share Film / Picnic at Hanging Rock × WMG A classic Australian mystery/drama film, released in 1975 and directed by Peter Weir.

Set in 1900 and based on the novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the story of an ill-fated outing undertaken by Australian schoolgirls enrolled at an exclusive finishing school. Students of Appleyard College are permitted to spend Valentine's Day at Hanging Rock, collecting information for an essay to be written upon their return. After being granted permission by their French mistress, Miranda, Marion, Irma and Edith set off to explore the upper slopes of the rock. Wandering through the maze-like tunnels, Edith discovers that the others appear to have fallen into a trance; the trio have, as one, removed their shoes and stockings, and proceed to drift into another narrow passage. Fearful, Edith runs back to fetch help, Mathematics mistress Miss McCraw heading up to fetch them. However, teacher and students disappear without a trace. The film features visually hypnotic photography by Oscar winner Russel Boyd and a haunting score by Bruce Smeaton, and established Weir as a major international talent. This film provides examples of: In the deleted scenes from the ending the ghost of Sara appears - she could be a vengeful spirit or Mrs Appleyard's hallucination.

Not to mention the central mystery, which is never solved: what the hell happened to the missing girls and their teacher? Ambiguously Jewish : Irma, who's also far the richest of her peers, is a Rothschild on her mother's side and described as a dark-haired beauty - in a school of blondes - with dark eyes and typical black curly hair. Animal Motifs : In Michael's dreams Miranda is represented by a swan. Insects also appear at several key points, from the ants devouring the leftover Valentine's cake to the praying mantis seen after Sara's suicide. Based on a Great Big Lie : It's almost guaranteed that anytime the film/book is brought up/read/watched, someone's going to claim it actually happened. It didn't. Being Watched : The narration in the book suggests the picnickers are being watched by Hanging Rock itself. The film replicates this idea with looming shots of the rock. Parts of the rock actually seem to resemble faces. Blade-of-Grass Cut : Close-ups of the ants and other bugs crawling all over the food that the girls have brought to the picnic. Boarding School : Appleyard College, a girls' finishing school.

Bury Your Gays : Sara, who clearly was in love with beautiful Miranda, flings herself out a window of the college. Class Trip : The titular picnic at Hanging Rock. Clock King : Mrs. Appleyard is associated with clocks and watches throughout. Note also that at Hanging Rock, everyone's watches stop. Covert Pervert : When Albert is making comments about the girls: Michael: I'd rather you didn't say crude things like that, Albert. Albert: I say the crude things; you just think them. Cultural Cringe : The whole point of the boarding school is to train the girls to behave like proper English ladies. Dan Browned : Supposed quotations from the "actual" police reports of the time are referenced in the novel, which went unquestioned by many readers. Don't Go in the Woods : A teacher and group of students venture into the Australian wilderness on a picnic. Something out there claims the girls one by one, and they're never seen again. Fat Girl : Edith. Of the four girls that go climbing, the three pretty ones are somehow absorbed by Hanging Rock, while Edith is immune. Michael and Irma on their Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date : Irma: The summer will soon be over.

Michael: Just as well, probably. I don't think this punt will be safe enough to take out again. Irma: It's sad, really. Like someone died. Late in the movie Mrs. Appleyard realizes, to her own annoyance, how much she had come to rely on Ms. McCraw and her "masculine intellect". Michael and Albert. They go to Queensland together at the end of the book. I Need a Freaking Drink : Mrs. Appleyard throws one back after Miss Lumley hands in her resignation. I Will Find You : Michael is obsessed with finding the girls, particularly Miranda. Jerkass : Mrs. Appleyard, who cares little for the children. Miss Lumley, who ties Sara against a wall to correct her posture (although on Mrs. Appleyard's orders, and she seems to feel bad about it). Karmic Death : Mrs. Appleyard and, in the novel, Miss Lumley. Kick Them While They Are Down : Sara is badly depressed after Miranda's disappearance, so Mrs. Appleyard decides that now would be a good time to send her back to the orphanage. Lady in Red : Irma when she last visits the school.

Whatever happens at Hanging Rock seems to have something to do with the girls' blooming sexuality. Irma, the only one of the four to be found, wears a scarlet dress upon her return, in contrast to the drab outfits of the girls that study there. Long Lost Sibling : Sara and Albert. They both come from the Ballarat orphanage, but Albert aged out of the system and Sara (almost 10 years younger than yer brother) was eventually adopted by a rich man. Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane : In the book, odd things happen with time during the picnic. No one's watch works correctly. Things take longer than they should or happen much more quickly than seems possible. None of it is so far out there that it is unrealistic, but it is just weird enough for the audience to consider the possibility that the supernatural may have been involved in the girls' disappearance. This is pushed firmly into supernatural territory by The Secret of Hanging Rock, as summarized here . Never Found the Body : The two girls and the teacher who disappeared at the rock are never found. Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date : Michael and Irma have one; it doesn't go well. The scene was deleted in the Re Cut .

One Degree of Separation : Sara and Albert are long-lost siblings, but never learn of each other's presence in Woodend. If Sara had been allowed to go to the picnic, they probably would have been reunited. One-Gender School : Mrs Appleyard's College for Young Ladies. Justified in that it's 1900 and upper-class schools were almost always single-gender. One Name Only : All other major characters have surnames, but Miranda's is noticeably avoided in the book. The film uses "Miranda St Clare" on her MISSING poster . Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping : In-universe. When Sara talks about her time in the orphanage, her posh, cultivated accent slips into something more distinctly Australian. Out-of-Character Alert : In the book, Mlle de Poitiers realises Sara is in danger because she never would have left Miranda's portrait behind. Police Are Useless : While Sergeant Bumpher and his deputies provide a very thorough investigation, ultimately they're as baffled as anyone about the disappearances. Re Cut : Weir's director's cut removes a few scenes.

(Sadly, only the director's cut is available in America, one of the few times The Criterion Collection has really dropped the ball. Many viewers find the original theatrical cut to be superior. There is a UK DVD available with both versions of the film.) Revised Ending : The novel's final chapter was deleted, then published separately in 1987 as The Secret of Hanging Rock. Rescue Romance : Most of people in town assume that is what's going on between Michael and Irma, but since he was really looking for Miranda instead, it doesn't pan out. Romantic Two-Girl Friendship : The film opens with the schoolgirls exchanging passionate valentines. Sara has a very obvious crush on Miranda. Same Language Dub : The girl visually portraying Edith was not a professional actress but she looked exactly as the director wanted the character of Edith to look. Her lines were dubbed in post. Scare Chord : When Albert finds Michael catatonic after staying overnight on the rock, we get a scare chord which sounds like a bird call. Secret Relationship : Minnie and Tom are carrying on an affair and are married in the epilogue.

Sibling Yin-Yang : Sarah is sensitive and cultured while Albert is hot blooded and barely manages to write. Justified because Sarah become the ward of a richman who paid for her education while Albert spent his childhood as a Street Urchin until being old enough to get a job. "If the bloody cop and the bloody abo tracker and the bloody dog can't find 'em, well, no one bloody can." Situational Sexuality : The girls don't have any outlet for their burgeoning feelings except each other. Sole Survivor : Irma is found, but has no memory of what happened on the rock. Thousand-Yard Stare : Michael is in shock when Albert finds him after he stayed overnight at the rock. Trail of Bread Crumbs : Michael leaves paper tags in the bushes as he climbs the rock. Criterion Unboxing Of Picnic At Hanging Rock directed by Peter Weir - YouTube Criterion Unboxing Of Picnic At Hanging Rock directed by Peter Weir Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now.

Please try again later. Published on Jul 8, 2014 Unboxing of one of the best releases of the year so far A must have in any collection Category Movie Review - - Screen: Australian Hawthorne Romance:From Down Under - NYTimes.com Screen: Australian Hawthorne Romance:From Down Under By VINCENT CANBY Published: February 23, 1979 HORROR need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day. the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways.

It's also the fascination of "Picnic at Hanging Rock," the Australian film directed by Peter Weir, who was introduced to American audiences late last year by his moodily impressive "The Last Wave." "Picnic at Hanging Rock," which opens today at the Little Carnegie, is about three virginal young women and a school mistress who, on Valentines Day, 1900, disappear without trace while on an expedition to a splendid geological outcropping called Hanging Rock. The movie would like us to believe it's based on fact though it's really based on a novel by Joan Lindsay. Whatever the origins the story provides Mr. Weir with material for a kind of Australian horror-romance that recalls Nathaniel Hawthorne's preoccupation with the spiritual and moral heritage of his own New England landscape. In "The Last Wave" Mr. Weir made what seemed to me to be the grave mistake of attempting to provide answers for the mysteries he so beautifully set up earlier in the film. "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is different. It's a movie composed almost entirely of clues. Its methods are illusory, not necessarily to trick us but to force us to stretch our imaginations. Instead of exposition, Mr.

Weir and his screen writer, Cliff Green, deal in moods. The opening section of the film, in which we are introduced to the students at Mrs. Appleyard's College for young women, dramatizes their innocence with such intensity that we are immediately aware of sexual longings everywhere: students for students, students for school mistress, school mistress for someone unknown, even the maid for the gardener. Exchanged with high giggles are Valentines that pledge eternal love. Quite arbitrarily one of the girls is prevented from going on the picnic. Why? The only explanation is that the head mistress. Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), is a monster. Another girl, carried away by her anticipation of the glorious day and by her own intimations of immortality, remembers Poe's lines. "All that we see or seem / is but a dream within a dream." The heat of the day is as much of a presence during the picnic as the rock formation that provides shadow for the group. Mr. Weir makes us believe that the landscape is alive. When four of the girls set off to explore the rock, ignoring warnings of venomous snakes and poisonous ants, we have the impression that they are being called.

As they climb higher and higher into the volcanic outcropping, one girl, the chubby one named Edith, panics and runs screaming back to the base. For some unexplained reason, the dry, spinterish teacher of geometry decides to follow the three who are climbing the rock. Later, after the disappearance of the group has been confirmed, a witness reports having seen the teacher at some distance, running across a plateau, in her pantaloons. I can't tell you how the story is resolved, though some people will feel cheated. That, however, will be to have anticipated a different movie. I'm not sure that Mr. Weir has succeeded in evoking his "dream within a dream" world without using one or two more red herrings than are absolutely necessary, but because the film has a hypnotic spell I accept its excesses.

"Picnic at Hanging Rock" is very nicely cast, beginning with Rachel Roberts and including Anne Lambert as Miranda, the beautiful girl who leads her classmates into oblivion; Karen Robson as Irma, the one member of the expedition who survives but remembers nothing; Dominic Guard as a young man who shares Irma's forgotten secret; and Christine Schuler as the chubby girl who complains when she's included in a plan and complains even more when she's left out. Though, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" has immense feeling for an interest in the Australian landscape, it is anything but a picturesque or provincial film. Among other things it knows that there are some romantic longings, especially in the young, that are so overwhelming they simply cannot be contained. The result is a movie that is both spooky and sexy. From Down Under PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, directed by Peter Weir; screenplay by Cliff Green, based on the novel by Joan Lindsay; director of photography, Russell Boyd; art director, David Copping; produced by James and Hal McElroy; released by the Atlantic Releasing Corporation. At the Little Carnegie, 57th Street east of Seventh Avenue. Running time: 110 minutes. This film has not been rated. Mrs.

Appleyard . . . . . Rachel Roberts Dianne De Poiters . . . . . Helen Morse Minnie . . . . . Jacki Weaver Super Reviewer ½ Miranda: Everything begins and ends at the exact right time and place. "A recollection of evil." Picnic at Hanging Rock is like nothing you would expect. It has a horror film plot, but it never turns into a horror film. It's haunting, sure, but never terrifying, and I am perfectly fine with that. What the movie is, is a brilliantly subtle piece of filmmaking. The atmosphere during the Hanging Rock scenes is amazing and the cinematography throughout the whole movie is perfect. The movie turns into a realistic missing persons story. Shit happens in this world that will never be explained. This story is told with that belief. Stuff happens, and we will never know the outcome. People are abducted and killed daily and some of them we will never find and we will never completely know the truth about what happened to them. Was it a human being? Was it something otherworldly? Who's to say? That's what this movie is all about.

A group of students at a girls college in 1900 Australia go for a picnic at Hanging Rock. Four students go away from the group and start exploring the rock formations. Even as we watch them, we have no real idea what is going on, as they disappear behind a rock never to be seen again. One student doesn't follow them and makes it back fine. A teacher goes looking for the missing students and is also never seen again. From there, search parties are put out and the girls wonder what happened to their classmates. But you get the sense that everyone knows it is a lost cause. There's a lot to love if you can stand the extremely slow and eventless pacing of the film. I could to a certain extent, but I found myself, at times, getting very far away from the movie. I couldn't concentrate on the film the whole time, but I could always come back and get right back into the film. With more viewings I think I would like it a lot more. This movie kind of reminds me of an event prior to The Blair Witch Project.

It's the unexplained that leads people to always want answers, but they never will be able to get them and if they try, they too will become part of the mystery. From everything you hear about this movie, it is weird that once you finally watch it, it is nothing like what you expected. Still, it is as haunting a movie as you could ever wish to see, without ever actually being scared. Melvin White Super Reviewer ½ This movie spooked me out with its haunted story of missing schoolgirls and one of their teachers in the Australian wilderness. There's something inexplicably mysterious and evil at Hanging Rock; I'd be scared to go to the actual location where they made this movie. Peter Weir's film is something special. The scenery is quiet, warm and beautiful at first, but then it turns frightening, like a trap was set off when the girls entered it. Stuck in my mind is the final view of the three girls walking up the path into the rocky opening. The desperate piano and haunting pan pipe music, combined with the low rumbling sound effects really sets the eerie mood. There is something wrong permeating the entire movie, as if it was cursing the viewers. What happened there?

The second half of the movie suggests different things, but, as many have said, the more they reveal, the more of a mystery it becomes. Any definite answers or closure would make the movie forgettable. I can see how the Blair Witch Project got some of its ideas here. If those schoolgirls had a camcorder, what would it have captured? Lafe Fredbjornson Picnic at Hanging Rock: Australia's own Valentine's Day mystery | Movie News | SBS Movies Picnic at Hanging Rock: Australia's own Valentine's Day mystery (Picnic at Hanging Rock) Forty years after Peter Weir stunned the world with his tale of missing girls in the bush, the unforgettable drama remains a mystifying experience. Here, we return to the scene of one of most important movies in Australian history. By 0 Why It’s Important If you were to pick the most influential Australian film of all time, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) would be among the top contenders.

Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t launch the Australian New Wave of cinema (an achievement variously credited to 1971’s Wake in Fright or Walkabout ), but it was certainly the first film of that movement to combine critical acclaim with box office success. Per Barry Humphries, Peter Weir’s adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s novel is about “nice girls in white dresses vanishing into rocks”. St Valentine’s Day 1900 sees three students and one teacher from the prestigious all-girls’ Appleyard College vanish on an excursion to Hanging Rock, a geological formation not far from Melbourne. One of the students is found, the others are not. The disappearance remains unexplained, opening up fault lines in the community, exacerbating insecurities and instigating further tragedy. Directed by Weir with languid grace, Picnic at Hanging Rock earned critical plaudits upon release; it’s still regarded as one of Australia’s greatest films. The movie’s steadfast refusal to provide answers to its mysteries frustrated America audiences; as Weir noted in a 2005 interview, “We could not get a release...

One distributor threw his coffee cup at the screen at the end of it, because he’d wasted two hours of his life.” But a $5 million-plus gross at the local box office proved that Australian audiences were ready to embrace the burgeoning Australian film industry. What’s It Really About? Enigmatic Ambiguity Picnic at Hanging Rock is steeped in mystery. The scene in which the girls disappear into the Rock, in particular, is powerfully evocative and unabashedly enigmatic. Russell Boyd’s ethereal, timeless cinematography creates a dreamy ambiance, while the score – a combination of pan pipes, classical music and ominous rumbling – balances the oneiric with ambiguous menace. The girls drift into a somnolent haze then wander, as though in a dream, into oblivion. The prevailing sense is unknowable, unearthly, yet utterly enchanting. This aura of ambiguity is integral to the film’s appeal. As Ed Roginski noted in his 1979 review: “Questions are the essence of this film.” One such question concerns whether or not the original story is based on real events.

Lindsay’s novel opens with this playful preface: “Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.” She took a similar view on the central question regarding the cause of the disappearance, arguing: “Everyone who has enjoyed my book or read it, they really have to work it out for themselves… you’ll all have to work out what you think is true for you, because truth is everything to me.” The inscrutability of Picnic at Hanging Rock has inspired reams of analysis, both academic and decidedly less so. (In the latter category, Yvonne Rousseau’s 1980 book The Murders at Hanging Rock provided five possible explanations for true Hanging Rock tragics.) Yet Lindsay’s original manuscript wasn’t as ambiguous, including a since-omitted chapter that provides insight into the particulars of Hanging Rock’s mystical machinations – insight that involves time warps, portals and lizard transformations.

(No wonder publisher John Taylor introduced it as “the previously invisible foundation stone on whose absence the Australian film industry built itself.” It’s hard to imagine such a film concluding with such a scene inspiring the Australian New Wave!) Budding Sexuality The absence at the heart of Picnic at Hanging Rock is catnip for film theorists looking to draw meaning from the film, so it comes as no surprise that many popular interpretations on the film centre on seemingly every film academic’s favourite theme: sex. All that tossing around of terms like ‘vaginal’ and ‘phallic’ makes a whole of sense in this case; while in and around Hanging Rock the camera regularly peers up at masculine, yes, phallic, monoliths or gazes through stony, yes, vaginal, crevices. The film opens with Appleyard’s students – invariably dressed in virginal white – perusing love letters. (It is Valentine’s Day, remember). Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) – regularly framed as an object of desire (“a Botticelli angel”) and ultimately consumed by the Rock – encourages roommate Sara (Margaret Nelson) to find someone else to love as she “won’t be here much longer”.

That sort of foreshadowing – the conflation of impending doom and ephemeral eroticism – lingers throughout Picnic at Hanging Rock’s first act. One reading, then, is that the girls’ disappearance operates a metaphor for losing one’s virginity, something that consumes their perceived ‘innocence,’ something that is anticipated and dreaded in equal measure. This isn’t entirely satisfactory, providing little insight into the reaction to the girls’ disappearance in the wider community while failing to account for the implied romantic bond between Miranda and Sara. Sara ultimately commits suicide in the wake of both Miranda’s disappearance and her victimisation at the hands of the school’s headmistress (Rachel Roberts), suggesting the importance of their connection. (Though Stephanie Gauper, for one, argues that mateship overshadows sexuality – heterosexual or homosexual – in Weir’s films, dismissing the apparent lesbian subtext.) If Picnic at Hanging Rock is a representation of nascent sexuality, then it’s more complex than a simple transactional view of virginity, but rather a portrayal that allows for sex as beautiful, mysterious, difficult, and fluid. English Colonialisation of Australia The date of Picnic at Hanging Rock’s dramatic events is not accidental.

St Valentine’s Day links to the aforementioned theme of budding sexuality. (It’s also the date of Lindsay’s wedding.) 1900 sets the events shortly before the foundation of the Federation of Australia, and therefore, with the country squarely under English rule. This ties directly into one of the most common readings of the film: that it represents, per Jim Tate, a “dramatic clash between the refinement of European culture and the uncouth power of the bush”. That clash is represented through various dichotomies throughout the film: the contrast between civil Englishman Michael (Dominic Guard) and vulgar valet Albert (John Jarratt, in one of his earliest roles); or the conflict between the pompous Mrs Appleyard and the meek Sara, who, before her suicide, is strapped to a wall to “improve her posture”; and of course, there’s the juxtaposition between the lush, oh-so-English grounds of Appleyard College and the untamed wilderness that contains Hanging Rock, along with “venomous snakes and poisonous ants”. Even time seems to advance differently in these two worlds.

When the excursion arrives at Hanging Rock, the rigid schedule of the school gives way to a space where watches inexplicably stop and time flows like thick syrup. A conversation in the buggy on the way suggests the underlying symbolism; when informed that the Hanging Rock is a million years old, a student reflects that it must have been “waiting here just for us”. The inexplicable mysticism of the Hanging Rock represents more than simply an uncouth Australia, but the Australia before English settlement. An Australia belonging to its Indigenous inhabitants. Not an Australia “waiting” for the English Empire to claim it, but a rich country with its own culture and beliefs. A country with its own time and of its own time: the Dreamtime. The film begins, after all, with an Edgar Allan Poe poem about dreams read over a shot of Appleyard College, its elegant architecture and verdant yards portrayed as a foreign body in a natural landscape. The College – and by extension, the Commonwealth – is inherently unnatural, and the events that follow a natural consequence of its unwelcome invasion. What to Watch Next Peter Weir’s following feature, The Last Wave (1977), opens with a similar scene to that described above, albeit in a contemporary setting.

The film reveals a schoolyard in the outback – its green lawns similarly starkly contrast with the desert surrounds – before it is assaulted by a ferocious storm from a clear blue sky. Where Picnic at Hanging Rock keeps its Aboriginal themes as subtext, The Last Wave draws them to the surface, telling the story of a city lawyer who begins to see premonitions after he’s drawn into a local tribal conflict. It’s a poignant companion piece to Picnic at Hanging Rock, possessing the same artistry and similar themes. Weir’s first feature, The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), is instructive too, demonstrating that his oh-so-Australian parched pastoral palette (influenced by the Heidelberg school of oil painting, especially Frederick McCubbin) was already fully formed prior to Picnic at Hanging Rock. Beyond Weir’s back catalogue, it’s also worth watching Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterful L’Avventura (1960). It shares with Weir’s film an unexplained disappearance and a lingering sense of ennui. It’s hard to imagine that Picnic at Hanging Rock wasn’t, at least in part, influenced by this arthouse classic.

From the decidedly less prestigious end of cinema, there’s Wolf Creek (2005). Granted, by the time John Jarratt is hunting down teenagers while spouting Crocodile Dundee lines, the film doesn’t have much in common with Picnic at Hanging Rock beyond sharing an actor. But the film’s first act – a journey into the fringes of the Australian outback – is deeply indebted to Weir’s film, even down to the unaccountably inoperative clocks. For reading material the obvious choice is Joan Lindsay’s original novel. It’s a wonderful read, though it should be pointed that screenwriter Cliff Green’s adaptation is remarkably faithful, regularly appropriating lines of dialogue wholesale. And if you want some insight into how Picnic at Hanging Rock captured the nation’s imagination, you could always try to hunt down the aforementioned Murders at Hanging Rock. Watch the trailer for Picnic at Hannging Rock below: Picnic At Hanging Rock is screened every year around Valentine's Day at Hanging Rock in the Macedon Ranges.

Question: Who directed the film Picnic at flanging Rock?
Answer: PETER WEIR